VCD with AVIs & MP3s

[Big Dan]

I have a few .AVIs that I would like to put on a VCD along with a few dozen MP3s. I'd like to have a menu that lets you select between either the videos or goig to a separate menu to select the MP3 songs. This should be able to play on a DVD player. Is this possible? I have Nero (full suite) and TMPGEnc DVD Author but can't get the job done...

Thanks much.

[reboot]

Not possible.

[sanjayk]

Well, Well

VCD tracks & MP3 tracks cannot be mixed together.

However if you have TMPGEnc you can do this. Take a still picture as your video source. JPEG or BMP will do. (You dont want to stare at ablank screen). Take your MP3 file as audio source. Select the VCD template and encode. You will get a VCD compliant MPEG file with only one still image for the duration of the audio. Author this file along with your other VCD files to a VCD.

Nero Vision Express will NOT import still image as video.

[Big Dan]

I tried your suggestion, but no sound plays when I run the file.

I used TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 to merge a .JPG file with a .MP3 file. The resulting file can be merged into either .MPG or .AVI format, but either way I don't get any sound. Any chance you know what I'm doing wrong?

[ZippyP.]

TMPGEnc can have trouble with some MP3 files, convert it to wav first. Use the jpg as the video source and the wav as the audio source for your encode.

[Big Dan]

Thanks Zippy, works fine now.

One question though. My original MP3 file was roughly 5 Mb. Now that I've had to convert the MP3 to WAV, it's 50 Mb. If my VCD only has about 400 Mb left on it (after adding a music video), I was hoping to fit quite a few MP3s on it, now that every 4 minute song is ~50 Mb, I'll only be able to fit 7-9 songs on the VCD. Any advice?

[ZippyP.]

TMPGEnc will encode your jpg and wav at the standard vcd bitrates of 1150 kbps for the Mpeg1 video and 224 kbps for the MP2 audio. Your mpeg can be up to 800 MB and will fit a standard CD, giving you up to 80 mins of playing time. You will need to author and burn the mpeg into VCD format, I suggest VCDEasy.

[sanjayk]

TMPGEnc can have trouble with some MP3 files...

That is correct. TMPGEnc does have problem with MP3 specially with VBR MP3.

[Hyper Shinchan]

You can always use Nero Vison Express and make a slideshow with audio, and you will encode the jpg as still frames at 704x480/576, with better resolution then a video made with TMPGEnc and with only few MB (only the audio track take MBs but it's a normal MPEG1 Layer 2 224Kbps).
I use this system to make this job, but you must have Nero Vison Express, but I think that there are other way, but they are most hard.
The problem with TMPGEnc is that if you encode the video with the audio you will have a real videostream, with Nero Vision Express you will have only still frames and audio.